Sector General Omnibus 3 - General Practice (17 page)

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Authors: James White

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“Cha Thrat,” the Cinrusskin said quietly, “I have a strong feeling that you have made a new friend …”
It broke off as the casualty deck’s speaker came to life with the overamplified voice of Fletcher.
“Senior Physician, Control here.” it said. “Hyperspace Jump complete and we are estimating the Goglesk orbiting maneuver in three hours, two minutes. The lander is powered up and ready to go, so you can transfer your medical gear as soon as convenient.
“We are in normal-space radio contact with Lieutenant Wainright,” it went on, “who wants to talk to you about your patient, Khone.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Prilicla replied. “We want to talk about Khone as well. Please relay friend Wainright’s message to the casualty deck here and to the lander bay when we move out. We can work as we talk.”
“Will do,” Fletcher said. “Relay complete. You are through to Senior Physician Prilicla, Lieutenant. Go ahead.”
In spite of the distortion caused by the translation into Sommaradvan, Cha Thrat could detect the deep anxiety in Wainright’s voice. She listened carefully with only part of her mind on the job of helping Naydrad load medical equipment onto the litter.
“I’m sorry, Doctor,” it said, “the original arrangements for the pickup on our landing area will have to be scrapped. Khone isn’t able to travel, and sending transport manned by off-planet people to collect it from its town will be tricky. At a time like this the natives are particularly, well, twitchy, and the arrival of visually horrifying alien monsters to carry it and its unborn child away could cause a joining and—”
“Friend Wainright,” Prilicla interrupted gently, “what is the condition of the patient?”
“I don’t know, Doctor,” the Lieutenant replied. “When we met three days ago it told me that Junior would arrive very soon and would I please send for the ambulance ship. It also said that it had to make arrangements to have its patients cared for, and that it would come to the base shortly before the lander was due. Then a few hours ago a message was relayed verbally to the base saying that it could not move from its house, but the bearer of the message could not tell me whether the cause was illness or injury. Also, it asked if you had another power pack for the scanner Conway left with it. Khone has been impressing its patients with that particular marvel of Federation medical science and the energy cell is flat, which would explain why Khone was unable to give us any clinical information on its own present condition.”
“I’m sure you are right, friend Wainright,” Prilicla said. “However, the patient’s sudden loss of mobility indicates a possibly serious condition that may be deteriorating. Can you suggest a method of getting
it into the lander, quickly and with minimum risk to itself and its friends?”
“Frankly, no, Doctor,” Wainright said. “This is going to be a maximum-risk job from the word go. If it was a member of any other species we know of, I could load it onto my flyer and bring it to you within a few minutes. But no Gogleskan, not even Healer Khone, could sit that close to an off-planet creature without emitting a distress call, and you know what would happen then.”
“We do,” Prilicla said, trembling at the thought of the widespread, self-inflicted property damage to the town and the mental anguish of the inhabitants that would ensue.
The Lieutenant went on. “Your best bet would be to ignore the base and land as close as possible to Khone’s house, in a small clearing between it and the shore of an inland lake. I’ll circle the area in a flyer and guide you down. Maybe we can devise something on the spot. You’ll need some special remote handling devices to move it out, but I can help you with the external dimensions of Khone’s house and doorways …”
While Cha Thrat helped the rest of the medical team move equipment into the lander, Wainright and the empath continued to wrestle with the problem. But it was obvious that they had no clear answers and were, instead, trying to provide for all eventualities.
“Cha Thrat,” Prilicla said, breaking off its conversation with the base commander. “As a nonmember of the crew I cannot give you orders, but we’ll need as many extra hands down there as we can assemble. You are particularly well equipped with manipulatory appendages, as well as an understanding of the devices used to move and temporarily accommodate the patient, and I feel in you a willingness to accompany us.”
“Your feeling is correct,” Cha Thrat said, knowing that the intensity of excitement and gratitude the other’s words had generated made verbal thanks unnecessary.
“If we load any more gadgetry into the lander,” Naydrad said, “there won’t be enough space for the patient, much less a hulking great Sommaradvan.”
But there was enough space inside the lander to take all of them, especially when those not wearing gravity compensators, which was everyone but Prilicla, were further compressed by the lander’s savage deceleration. Lieutenant Dodds,
Rhabwar
’s astrogation officer and the lander’s pilot, had been told that speed had priority over a comfortable ride, and it obeyed that particular order with enthusiasm. So fast and uncomfortable was the descent that Cha Thrat saw nothing of Goglesk until she stepped onto its surface.
For a few moments she thought that she was back on Sommaradva, standing in a grassy clearing beside the shore of a great inland lake and with the tree-shrouded outlines of a small, servile township in the middle distance. But the ground beneath her feet was not that of her home planet, and the grass, wildflowers, and all the vegetation around her were subtly different in color, odor, and leaf structure from their counterparts on Sommaradva. Even the distant trees, although looking incredibly similar to some of the lowland varieties at home, were the products of a completely different evolutionary background.
Sector General had seemed strange and shocking to her at first, but it had been a fabrication of metal, a gigantic artificial house.
This
was a different world!
“Is your species afflicted with sudden and inexplicable bouts of paralysis?” Naydrad asked. “Stop wasting time and bring out the litter.”
She was guiding the powered litter down the unloading ramp when Wainright’s flyer landed and rolled to a stop close beside them. The five Earth-humans who manned the Goglesk base jumped out. Four of them scattered quickly and began running toward the town, testing their translation and public address equipment as they went, while the Lieutenant came toward the lander.
“If you have anything to do that involves two or more of you working closely together,” it said quickly, “do it now while the flyer is hiding you from view of the town. And when you move out, remain at least five meters apart. If these people see you moving closer together than that, or making actual bodily contact by touching limbs, it won’t precipitate
a joining, but it will cause them to feel deeply shocked and intensely uncomfortable. You must also—”
“Thank you, friend Wainright,” Prilicla said gently. “We cannot be reminded too often to be careful.”
The Lieutenant’s features deepened in color, and it did not speak again until, walking i a well-separated line abreast, they were approaching the outskirts of the town.
“It doesn’t look like much to us,” Wainright said softly, the feelings behind its words making Prilicla tremble, “but they had to fight very hard every day of their lives to achieve it, and I think they’re losing.”
The town occupied a wide crescent of grass and stony outcroppings enclosing a small, natural harbor. There were several jetties projecting into deep water, and most of the craft tied up alongside had thin, high funnels and paddle wheels as well as sails. One of the boats, clearly the legacy of a past joining, was smoke-blackened and sunk at its moorings. Hugging the water’s edge was a widely separated line of three- and four-story buildings, made of wood, stone, and dried clay. Ascending ramps running around all four walls gave access to the upper levels, so that from certain angles the buildings resembled thin pyramids.
These, according to the Goglesk tape, were the town’s manufacturing and food-processing facilities, and she thought that the smell of Gogleskan raw fish was just as unpleasant as that of their Sommaradvan counterparts. Perhaps that was the reason why the private dwellings, whose roofs and main structural supports were provided by the trees around the edge of the clearing, were so far away from the harbor.
As they moved over the top of a small hill, Wainright pointed out a low, partially roofed structure with a stream running under it. From their elevated position they could see into the maze of corridors and tiny rooms that was the town’s hospital and Khone’s adjoining dwelling.
The Lieutenant began speaking quietly into its suit mike, and she could hear the words of warning and reassurance being relayed at full volume from the speakers carried by the four Earth-humans who had preceded them.
“Please do not be afraid,” it was saying. “Despite the strange and frightening appearance of the beings you are seeing, they will not harm you. We are here to collect Healer Khone, at its own request, for treatment in our hospital. While we are transferring Khone to our vehicle we may have to come very close to the healer, and this may accidentally cause a call for joining to go out. A joining must not be allowed to happen, and so we urge everyone to move away from your homes, deep into the forest or far from the shore, so that a distress signal will not reach you. As an additional safeguard, we will place around the healer’s home devices that will make a loud and continuous sound. This sound will be as unpleasant to you as it is to us, but it will merge with and change the sound of any nearby distress signal so that it will no longer be a call for joining.”
Wainright looked toward Prilicla and when the empath signaled its approval, it changed to the personal suit frequency and went on. “Record and rerun that, please, until I either amend the message or tell you to stop.”
“Will they believe all that?” Naydrad called suddenly from its position along the line. “Do they really trust us off-planet monsters?”
The Lieutenant moved several paces down the hill before replying. “They trust the Monitor Corps because we have been able to help them in various ways. Khone trusts Conway for obvious reasons and as their trusted healer, it has been able to convince the townspeople that Conway’s horrifying friends are also worthy of trust. The trouble is, Gogleskans are a race of loners who don’t always do as they’re told.
“Some of them,” it went on, “could have good reasons for not wanting to leave their homes. Illness or infirmity, young children to be cared for, or for reasons that seem good only to a Gogleskan. That’s why we have to use the sound distorters.”
Naydrad seemed satisfied but Cha Thrat was not. Out of consideration for Prilicla, who would suffer everyone else’s feelings of anxiety as well as her own, she remained silent.
Like everyone else in Maintenance, she knew about those distorters. Suggested and designed by Ees-Tawn, the department’s head of Unique
Technology, in response to one of Conway’s long-term Gogleskan requirements, the devices were still in the prototype stage. If successful they would go into mass production until they were in every Gogleskan home, factory, and seagoing vessel. It was not expected that the devices would eliminate joinings entirely, but with sensitive audio detectors coupled to automatic actuators, it was hoped that the link-ups that did occur would be limited to a few persons. That would mean that a joining’s destructive potential would be negligible, shorter in duration, and psychologically less damaging to the beings concerned.
Under laboratory conditions the distorters were effective against several FOKT distress call recordings provided by Conway, but the device had yet to be tested on Goglesk itself.
The stink of fish worsened, and the sound of the monitors broadcasting the Lieutenant’s message grew louder as they neared the hospital. Apart from a few glimpses she had of the Earth-humans moving between the houses at the edge of the clearing, there were no signs of life in the town.
“Stop sending now,” Wainright briskly said. “Anyone who hasn’t acted on the message by now doesn’t intend to. Harmon, take up the flyer and give me an aerial view of this area. The rest of you place the distorters around the hospital, then stand by. Cha Thrat, Naydrad, ready with the litter?”
Quickly, Cha Thrat positioned the vehicle close to the entrance of Khone’s dwelling, ran out the rear ramp, and opened the canopy in readiness to receive the patient. They could not risk touching Khone within sight of other Gogleskans and were hoping that the little healer would come out and board the vehicle itself. In case it did not, Naydrad would send in its remote-controlled probe to find out why.
Because they would make conversation difficult—and so far nothing had happened that could cause any Gogleskan to emit a distress call—the distorters remained silent.
“Friend Khone,” Prilicla said, and the waves of sympathy, reassurance, and friendship emanating from it were almost palpable. “We have come to help you. Please come out.”
They waited for what seemed like a very long time, but there was neither sight nor sound of Khone.
“Naydrad …” Wainright began.
“I’m doing it,” the Kelgian snapped.
The tiny vehicle, bristling with sound, vision, and biosensors as well as a comprehensive array of handling devices, rolled across the uneven surface and into Khone’s front entrance, pushing aside the curtain of woven vegetable fibers that hung there. The view all around it was projected onto the litter’s repeater screen.

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